TechCrunch reported that sales of paid web apps had by January 2011 sunk, with the best-selling app earning just $165 a week.

Same-store sales sank 18 percent.

But the market for coupes was shrinking; when sales sank below 70,000 in 1997, Ford clipped the T-Bird's wings and a five-year hiatus began.

A high-priced drink in a category in which sales were sinking, Wild Turkey, by logic, should have been aimed at sophisticated, white-collar consumers.

Mitsubishi's sales sank 35 percent to 2.52 trillion yen ($22.4 billion) from 3.89 trillion yen a year earlier.

Scrap supplies from Middle East owners meantime dried up in the summer, while even central-bank sales sank to a 10-year low.

Then sales sank.

Mitsubishi's American sales sank about 25 percent last year.

In the United States, Mitsubishi's sales sank 37 percent last year to 161,000 cars and trucks, less than half its peak of 345,000 vehicles in 2002.

Pottery Barn returned to basics after sales sank when it replaced moderately priced accessories with fancier ones.